But SQM's largest shareholder, Julio Ponce Lerou (who, the WSJ writes, is also "the son-in-law of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet"), challenged Chile's approval of the Nutrien-Tianqi deal in court. This has left SQM shareholders worried that Tianqi might share industry secrets with Albemarle.Ĭhile's competition regulator has approved the deal, as long as Tianqi nominates directors to SQM's board that are not direct employees and as long as Tianqi-nominated directors don't share any commercially sensitive information. But Tianqi partners with Albemarle to operate a large lithium mine in Australia. The Wall Street Journal writes that Canadian mining company Nutrien owns a 24-percent stake in SQM, which it would like to sell to Chinese firm Tianqi Lithium Corp.
The rivalry doesn't stop at water between Albemarle and SQM it appears that the ownership of the companies is also a source of dispute. However, the office couldn't tell whether it was SQM or Albemarle that was withdrawing more water. To deal with this, Chile’s water regulator is expected to place restrictions on new water rights in the Salar. In March, a Chilean government report found that more brine was being extracted from the Salar than was coming back in through rainfall and snowmelt. "Two years later, more trees were dying, but SQM failed to notify authorities, according to government inspection reports," Reuters noted. That suggested that the trees, which send roots into the Salar's aquifers to survive, weren't getting enough water. The accusations seem to stem from a routine government inspection in 2013, when regulators found that the native Algarrobo trees on SQM's property were dying. The brine water that has been accumulating for millennia under the Atacama is lithium-rich, and companies pump it out and send the brine to evaporation ponds where heat extracts the water and leaves the reactive alkali metal behind. Both companies have operations in the Atacama's Salar, and their operations are just three miles apart from each other.
This week, Reuters reported that both Albemarle and SQM have accused each other of overdrawing brine from the Atacama's underground aquifers. That has created some conflict in an industry that has long remained relatively quiet. As electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries become more popular, lithium resources are becoming more valuable. Two of the world's biggest lithium producers, Albemarle Corporation and Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (otherwise known as SQM), are tangled in two disputes: the first over water rights in Chile's Atacama desert and the second over ownership of SQM.īoth Albemarle and SQM have significant operations in the Atacama desert, where some of the world's best lithium resources exist.
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